Champion and Sonya
by Saboteuse
Summary: CHAPTER 2 NOW UP! A His Dark Materials-The Triplets of Belleville crossover. Champion Souza, the cyclist hero of The Triplets of Belleville, discovers his dæmon. More but no room to describe it here.
1. Awakening

Champion Souza slept on his bed, in a room bounded by walls covered with posters, photographs, faded memories. His experiences while held captive by the French mafia in Belleville were more traumatic than anyone knew. He would wake, terrified, from sickening dreams that he was back in the pitch-black chamber concealed behind the portrait of the owner of the Bellevillian French Wine Center, awaiting certain torment and death. Then he would awaken, and remember he was in Paris. That those who would have harmed him were dead or in prison. That the Bellevillian French Mafia's vile game of kidnapping Tour cyclists, drugging them, and seeing who the last to collapse from exhaustion when pedaling a stationery bike would be, was ended for good.

But he remembered things.

Things that no one should have to have encrypted in their memories.

He remembered hazy, peaceful visions of a black-and-white countryside, as he pedaled...a false sense of freedom...and a gunshot.

At the time he had neither known nor cared who had fired it, and even less, why. But he had later learned that it was the administration of death to a fellow cyclist who had become exhausted and fallen off his bicycle.

Thus the conscious thoughts upon awakening from a nightmare were no better than the nightmare itself.

His deepest desire at these moments was to go into the room where his grandmother slumbered, but at the age of twenty-one he felt that he could not do that. Usually, he would hold his obese bloodhound, Bruno, in his arms and gaze out the window at the elevated train tracks just feet from the house, feeling the wind on his face, the moonlight reflected in his enormous soulful eyes of liquid brown.

He was having one of those nightmares now. Black-clothed figures shaped like wardrobes marching down a glowing corridor...images of wheezing cyclists...an intravenous line connected to bottles of dark red liquid...he stirred fitfully but didn't awaken. _"Au secours!"_ he moaned, and flung out a long-fingered hand. Two-foot high little men with pitted red noses...more angular, inhuman, rectangular men...and a tongue on his face. He spluttered, and at last jerked himself from the coils of sleep, his gray-lidded eyes snapping open. "Pfft-" he reached up a hand to wipe his face, and found himself staring into a pair of shining, dark brown, orblike eyes. A greyhound was standing on his chest. _"Bruno?"_ Champion mumbled wonderingly, still in the throes of that state of mind where the world of half-consciousness is ruled by your own strange logic. _"Bruno,_ _tu as maigri! Tu n'es pas gros!"_ His obese dog had become exceedingly skinny_..."Non, c'est faux, Champion,"_ said the greyhound. _I must still be_ _dreaming,_ Champion thought. _It's a nice dream, it would be a pity to wake up. I'll_ _just stay here..._ The greyhound continued to speak. "I am Sonya, your dæmon." Champion didn't speak this language, but he somehow understood. _"Dæmon_? _Qu'est-ce_ _c'est?"_ he asked.

"I am you, but the part of you that you don't see. I take animal form...I changed shape often when you were a child..." _...quand j'étais un enfant,_ Champion's brain echoed. "When you grew up, I settled on one form, permanently. I am a greyhound..." This was too weird. Champion sat up with a great effort, trying to wake up, but the greyhound was still there. He rubbed his eyes, stood up, turned on the bedside light. _"Tu es ici!"_ he exclaimed. The dog laughed, softly like a breath of wind. "Yes, I am still here. Where did you expect me to go?" Champion jumped. There was a talking dog on his bed. Seeing his distress, the dog said soothingly, "Don't worry! I am your very own dæmon. I _am _you. My name is Sonya..." Champion was breathing heavily, his eyes wide open now. He looked intently at the creature.

She was a beautiful slender greyhound, with oversized paws, long graceful limbs, and a streamlined body. Her face was delicate and reminiscent of strong character, and her eyes were large and expressive. Her fur was sleek and very short, and of an interesting color: a monochrome, a light gray tinged with sepia. Still not knowing what to make of the apparition on his bed, and feeling as though he were within a dream, he asked her if she would be by his side to help him through the nightmares. "Of course," she said. "I am your closest companion. I will be in your dreams with you. I have always been here, but within you. But now I have rendered myself corporeal." Feeling dazed, Champion compulsively ran his fingers through his cropped dark brown hair and switched off the light, then stumbled back to his bed. He lay on the mattress with the busted springs, and ran trembling hand across a furry spine...

The gaunt young man in the bed with the creaking springs awoke from a dreamless sleep, just as a pale amber light started seeping into the sky. He stretched all four limbs, feeling oddly vulnerable, and caught sight of a skinny grey dog on his left. He was suddenly aware of another dog, of tawny-brown color and immense proportions, on his right. The yellowish dog was trying to clamber over him to get to the innocuous-looking intruder on his left. Champion knew now what the skinny grey dog was-- or, rather, who the skinny grey dog was—and had accepted it with the feeling that he was functioning within a dream that he would never truly wake up from.

He hefted Bruno off the bed and regarded his dæmon with gentle interest. He found she was awake also, and watching Bruno (who, at that moment, was preparing to spring onto the bed) with a lofty sense of calm. Her eyes were so quietly intense and full of focused consciousness that Champion followed their gaze just to see what she was looking at.

"Bruno..." he intoned affectionately, and hunched over the bed; he placed one hand firmly on the dog's back to discourage it from jumping, while scratching him briskly behind the ears with the other. A complacent voice said, "I'm not afraid of that dog, save for my inherent desire not to be flattened. To be honest, I don't know how you've managed to exist in three dimensions for this long." Champion laughed, a low and quiet chuckle like a gurgle of clear, pure springwater bubbling up from the dark and troubled bowels of the earth. He lifted his hands from Bruno and gestured for him to stay put. He chose not to discuss the reason Bruno was so fat; he knew it was partly his own fault for feeding him so much, and was sure Sonya knew it, too.

His pupils were shrunk to pinpoints from the glare of sunrise, and his limpid brown irises—of a color in between chocolate and dark amber brown—were brightly illuminated by the rays of almost blinding yellowness creeping in through the window. He pulled away the thin brownish sheets and pushed his thin frame, creakingly, from the bed. As his feet touched the floor, Sonya asked placidly, "Where are you going?"

"_À la salle de bains..."_ Champion responded, slightly perplexed. Sonya nodded. "You can't do that right now, you must wait for me." Champion frowned in confusion. _"Pourquoi? Je dois t'attendre?"_ Sonya raised her lithe form from the bed and stretched, saying as she did so, "Yes, a human cannot stray very far from his dæmon, nor she from him...a maximum of two to five meters. So you must wait for me to follow you to the bathroom..."

Champion stood up in shock. _"Mais—mais—"_ He was a cyclist! he explained. Cycling was his lifeblood, and he had to go fast! "Not to worry!" Sonya said pleasantly. "I am a greyhound, am I not? Why, at times you may struggle to keep up with me..." Champion sighed in deep relief, and sank back onto the bed. Then a thought crossed his mind, and he said he was curious; it was just morbid curiosity, he supposed, but he was curious; what, he wondered, would happen if he were to go too far from her? Sonya shuddered. "I have yet to experience it, of course; I have been within you ever since we came into being. But I know that it is not a pleasant sensation, to pull at the soul-link between us..." Champion felt reassured to now be informed of this aspect of living with a dæmon, and even more reassured to know that he would still be able to race. His beloved red racing bike had been trashed long ago, left behind on rocky, sun-sapped Mont Ventoux, and mangled beneath the wheels of a _voiture-balais_. He'd scraped together enough for a new bike, but not a sleek red one like he'd had before.

With a great tumult and creaking of bedsprings, Bruno leapt upon the bed. It undulated for a few moments, during which Sonya looked at Bruno reproachfully as he attempted to sniff her. Champion sighed heavily. He looked apprehensively from Sonya to the door, unsure of how this was done. Finally, he held out one long, pallid hand in his dæmon's direction, but didn't touch her; it was as though he was afraid that if were to touch her, she would somehow galvanize him. Sonya contemplated his outstretched hand for a moment, then said, "I expect you'd like to get up and get dressed, then. All right, I'm coming. You know, you needn't be afraid of touching me, or carrying me, even. Dæmons thrive on touch. Though you are right to assume that I am in some sense untouchable; no one but you may touch me." With that, she leapt delicately from the bed. Bruno looked puzzled, then followed suit by tumbling heavily onto the floor. Their human and master, respectively, got up off the bed and left the room amidst them.


	2. Gérard

_This continues where the first chapter left off. There is a list of French-English translations for the French in this chapter, as well as the previous one._

A few minutes later, Champion, Sonya, and Bruno each descended the stairs in their fashion. Sonya stepped quietly alongside her human, who was still wearing yesterday's training clothes. Bruno was lumbering pathetically down, shifting his bulk from step to step, his sticklike legs bravely attending to the task. As they neared the tile-floored hallway, Champion's heart started beating wildly. He looked from the half-open kitchen door to Sonya, then back towards the kitchen again. He whispered to his dæmon that his grandmother didn't know about dæmons; what was he to do? Bruno, meanwhile, unsure of why they had halted on the stairs, nudged Champion's shins aside and bumbled down. He nudged the door open and entered the kitchen. Champion heard his grandmother utter a few syllables of greeting to the dog, then resume whatever she was doing. Champion turned to Sonya and held up his hands. He explained that his grandmother might not understand.

Sonya sighed. "She'll understand; I'll _make_ her understand. She has a dæmon too. If need be I can speak to it, try and render it corporeal...this sort of thing doesn't normally happen in this world, I've learned." Champion drew back. "Il y a _d'autres_ mondes?"

"Yes," Sonya said. "There are many that are like ours, but different. Some of them even have a country called France..." Champion pressed his fingers to his temples. _This was not happening._ A dog had materialized in his house. A talking dog, who claimed to be his soul. Fine. "Je veux seulement cycler," he moaned. "C'est compliqué, ça?" Sonya felt hurt, but kept her cool. "I _am_ your dæmon." She nuzzled his overworked leg. Feeling a strange sensation, Champion sat down on the stairs and petted Sonya. He stroked her back, finding where the grain of the fur was; he examined her paws; he looked into her eyes, so pure and knowing. She _was_ his dæmon. He started to scratch her behind the ears, but just as his fingertips grazed her fur, he stopped. _She isn't really a dog, she isn't_ _Bruno_, he told himself. She's above all of that doglike pleasure...Slowly, with his hand still on her head, Champion stood up. He gently lifted his hand from the crown of her skull and peered at the kitchen door. "Allons-y," he muttered, half to himself. Then he realized that there was no one there _but_ himself. Sonya _was_ himself. This would take some getting used to. Human and dæmon crossed the tiled floor of the hallway and nudged open the kitchen door. Champion strode in, Sonya walking proudly beside him.

Madame Souza looked up from the bowl of thick, brownish tea which she had been sipping avidly a few moments before. Attired neatly in a green blouse with patched burnt-sienna sleeves and a nondescript skirt of a similar color, her squat, friendly figure was relaxed upon a kitchen chair. She smiled at Champion, and then her keen brown eyes fell upon Sonya. She automatically glanced around; seeing Bruno asleep under the round kitchen table, she frowned in confusion. "Qu'est-ce que c'est? Le chien là?" She gestured at Sonya. Champion turned and looked imploringly at his dæmon, asking her wordlessly to sort things out. As though he had communicated telepathically (which he had), Sonya trotted in front of him and spoke in that foreign language which they somehow all understood. "Hello, Madame Souza." Madame Souza accidentally knocked over the bowl of tea, and now a viscous, brownish concoction was seeping slowly all over the yellow tablecloth. She took no notice, however; instead, she stared at the talking dog. She gasped, then breathed chokingly for a few moments, during which Champion rushed over to make sure she was all right. When she had started breathing again, Sonya approached her, but Madame Souza's eyes grew wide behind their spectacles and she tried to beat the dog away with a dish-towel.

"Non, grand-maman, arrêt!" Champion said urgently, as he knelt and tended to a ruffled Sonya. He stroked her and whispered apologies into her fur. Madame Souza compulsively pushed her glasses higher up on her nose and stared at the pair of them. "Le chien a parlé!" she said disbelievingly. "C'est impossible!" "A lot of things are impossible," said Sonya tentatively. She waited to see if Madame Souza was going to try and launch another dish-towel attack. She didn't, but instead had her eyes glued to the dog, waiting to see what she was going to say next. The dæmon continued. "My name is Sonya. I'm Champion's...soul. You have something like me too. Please don't be alarmed." Madame Souza forced her gaze away from Sonya and groped for the overturned tea-bowl. She grabbed the nearby teapot, poured the bowl half-full, and took a few hearty gulps. Champion watched nervously. Sonya closed her eyes, a look of utmost concentration on her canine face. Champion looked from her to his grandmother. He thought he saw something on the table; a shimmering form, like a heat haze. It looked like particles coming together, assembling. Then he blinked, and it vanished. Sonya looked dejected, and Champion realized what she had been trying to do. "Ça va," he said reassuringly, seeing how sad she looked. She looked blearily at the spot where the particle cloud had been a few moments before. Madame Souza set down the tea-bowl and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She hadn't noticed the shimmer at all. Champion tried to explain to her that she wasn't crazy, since the dog talked to him also. She really was his dæmon. He told her that Sonya said that she, Madame Souza, had a dæmon as well, and was attempting to materialize it. Madame Souza looked perturbed. _Materialize it? _She asked doubtfully. _Tu es sûr, c'est une bonne idée?_ Champion assured her that it was, although he glanced over at Sonya. It's a good idea, Sonya thought to him. Champion twitched slightly at the voice in his head, almost indistinguishable from his own thoughts. Without another word Sonya turned away and began the arduous process of gathering Dust and giving it the properties of complex matter. Champion watched her with burning curiosity, as did Madame Souza. Champion thought he saw a cloud of swirling particles form; they seemed to be giving off their own kind of light, golden in color. At an astonishing speed, they conglomerated, becoming more and more dense, until they were swirling and moving in complex intricate patterns like the electron cloud in an atom. Then, in a whirlwind of thought and feeling that filled the room, a duck appeared on the table. "The most resilient of birds..." Sonya breathed. It was a drake, actually. A mallard drake, to be precise. Although not very large, he was a sturdy and pleasant-looking creature, with a glossy green head, yellow bill, and strong, dun-colored wings. His intelligent black eyes glinted boldly from his iridescent head as he looked piercingly about him. He looked around the room with a quick sweep of his head, then ruffled his wings. He opened his spoon-shaped beak and spoke. "Well, you finally noticed me." Madame Souza's hand went up to the spectacles and pushed them up on her nose with a vengeance. "About time, you know," the dæmon continued. "Sometimes I felt a bit ignored, being hidden away in your heart.""Comment tu t'appelles?" Madame Souza asked in wonder. "Gérard," the mallard said happily. His voice was rich in vivacious energy, but had a no-nonsense clip. Below the brazen and copper tones of his voice lay a wealth of kindness. There was something in that beady black eye that was indicative of an indominable will. With as much dignity as he could muster for a creature that waddled, he stepped purposefully over to the edge of the tablecloth, where Madame Souza's tensed hands lay. He looked her square in the eye. "Touch me," he entreated. Madame Souza reached out in spite of herself, but, perceiving the Dust aura surrounding him, drew her fingertips back fearfully. Champion broke out of his entranced reverie and placed a slender, long-fingered hand on her shoulder. She jumped, her long earrings swinging around unchecked. She smiled in a strained, perfunctory sort of way and indulged in some more tea. Gérard was still looking at Madame Souza expectantly. He looked so pitiful that Sonya slipped over to the table and rested her head and forepaws on the tabletop, looking sympathetically at him. He caught her gaze and gave a mournful quack. Sonya's tail thumped commiseratingly. Madame Souza put down the tea-bowl gently, and stared at the duck. Champion lissomely settled himself onto his stool, the only chair tall enough to accomodate his legs, which were so many times longer than his grandmother's. Sonya quietly turned and placed her forepaws back on the floor, walking over to Champion and sitting down on her haunches, her thin, supple form contained seamlessly in its greyness. Madame Souza turned and glanced at Sonya, finding it easier to accept the existence of someone else's dæmon than her own. Everything was so clear and grounded in reality, so not at all dreamlike, that it made the circumstances seem all the more strange and disagreeable. Champion felt his grandmother's gaze upon Sonya before he saw her eyes trained on the greyhound dæmon, and reached down to stroke her, tracing his hand in accordance with the smooth grain of the fur.

English translations for the French in chapters 1 and 2:

-Au secours! _Help!_

-Bruno, tu as maigri! Tu n'es pas gros! _Bruno, you lost weight! You're not fat!_

-Non, c'est faux, Champion. _No, not true, Champion._

-Qu'est-ce que c'est? _What is that?_

-Quand j'étais un enfant... _When I was a child..._

-Tu es ici! _You're here!_

-À la salle de bains... _To the bathroom..._

-Pourquoi? Je dois t'attendre? _Why? I have to wait for you?_

-Mais—mais— _But—but—_

-Voiture-balais _Medical aid van_

-Il y a _d'autres_ mondes? _There are _other _worlds?_

-Je veux seulement cycler. C'est compliqué, ça? _I only want to bicycle. Is this complicated?_

-Allons-y. _Let's go._

-Qu'est-ce que c'est? Le chien là? _What is that? The dog, there?_

-Non, grand-maman, arrêt! _No, Grandma, stop!_

-Le chien a parlé! C'est impossible! _The dog spoke! It's impossible!_

-Ça va. _It's okay._

- Tu es sûr, c'est une bonne idée? _Are you sure that's a good idea?_

-Comment tu t'appelles? _What's your name?_


End file.
